Cursing in his native Spanish, he climbed out, choking against the smoke, and ran off on foot in the direction of the station.

10:48 a.m.

Danny and Elena came out into the smoke through an emergency door on the ground floor of the Apostolic Library.

'Left,' Danny commanded through his handkerchief, and Elena turned them that way along the narrow road to the gardens.

'Harry,' Danny spoke urgently into the cell phone.

Nothing.

'Harry, can you hear me?'

There was a hiss on the other end, as if the line were still open. Then:

CLICK. The line went dead.

'Dammit!' Danny said out loud.

'What's the matter?' Elena pressed, sudden fear for Harry jolting her.

'Don't know…'

Harry, Hercules, and Marsciano huddled in silence on Marsciano's platform, peering over the side in the smoke.

'You're sure they're there?' Harry said to Hercules.

'Yes, down there just past the door.'

Just as Hercules dropped from the roof to the platform he had seen two of the black suits take position on either side of the door. But now the settling smoke made it impossible to see.

'Send them away.' Harry was suddenly pulling Anton Pilger's two-way radio from his belt, giving it to Hercules.

Taking it, Hercules clicked on, winking at Harry as he did. 'They've come down the outside of the tower by rope!' he said urgently in Italian. 'They're moving toward the helipad!'

'Va bene,' – Okay – a voice came back.

'The helipad! The helipad!' Hercules barked for good measure, then abruptly shut the radio off.

Beneath them was a scurrying, and then they glimpsed one man and then another move off at a dead run away from the tower.

'Now!' Harry said.

'Eminence,' Hercules said. The rope suddenly twisted in his hands; he made one loop and brought it over Marsciano's shoulders, then a second around his waist. A moment later Hercules was balanced on the rail and Harry was helping Marsciano onto it. Then, turning it through the steel of the railing, he held on and stepped back, lowering both men to the ground.

'Mr Harry!' Hercules' voice floated up. Harry saw the rope tighten from the ground and knew Hercules was guiding it. Taking hold, he swung up on the railing, then went over himself. At the same instant, a shot rang out, the rope half severed, and Harry dropped like a stone fifteen feet before the rope caught again. He hung there for another instant, and then the rope broke and he dropped to the ground.

Rolling over, he looked up at the sound of a scream.

Hercules had a black suit at the edge of the bushes, his steel-like arms around the man's neck.

'Look out!' Harry yelled.

The black suit still had his gun, and Hercules didn't see it. It was coming up against the side of Hercules' head.

'GUN!' Harry yelled again, getting up, rushing up toward them.

There was a tremendous report as the pistol went off just as Hercules wrenched. There was a hideous scream and both men fell back.

Harry and Marsciano arrived at the same moment. The black suit lay still, his head twisted at a terrible angle. Hercules was on his back, blood covering half his face.

'Hercules.' Harry moved quickly, kneeling down, looking at him. 'Jesus God,' he whispered, his hand moving in to feel his neck for a pulse.

Then Hercules opened one eye, and his hand reached up and wiped the blood from the other. Abruptly he sat up, blinking the blood away. A second wipe from his hand took a huge smear of the blood from his face. A clear flesh wound with the sheer white of a powder burn ran, like an arrow, up the side of it.

'Can't kill me,' he said. 'Not like that.'

In the distance came the sound of a train whistle. Finding a crutch, Hercules pulled himself up.

'The engine, Mr Harry.' Blood or not, Hercules' eyes danced. 'The engine!'

Adrianna came out of the building to see Eaton running full tilt up the road behind St Peter's, then vanishing like a wisp in the smoke.

'Skycam, what do you have on the engine?' she spat into the phone as she ran, cutting up the hill and across the grass toward the Palace of the Government, the Vatican's city hall. She was three minutes, maybe four, from the railroad station.

Elena pulled Danny back into the overhang of a tree near the Church of San Stefano and waited for the helicopter to pass over. It did, then abruptly swung back toward the station.

At the same moment, Danny's cell phone chirped.

'Harry-'

'We have Marsciano with us. What about the engine?'

Elena could feel the pound of her heart at Harry's voice. He was all right, at least for the moment.

'Harry-,' Danny said, 'we've got air cover. I don't know who it is. Go the other way, come down by Vatican Radio and in past the Ethiopian College. By then we'll be closer, and I can see what the hell's going on.'

10:50 a.m.

'Stay here!' Roscani yelled at Scala and Castelletti. Then, turning, he ran down the track after the little oily-green engine just as it chugged in through the open gates and vanished in the massive hang of smoke.

For a moment Scala and Castelletti stood open-mouthed, watching him. Little by little Roscani had been walking down the track following the engine, but his move and the quickness of it had caught them by surprise. Suddenly they started to run after him. A dozen yards later they stopped as they saw him reach the opening in the wall and disappear into the gloom. From where they stood, it looked like the entire Vatican was either on fire or fully under siege.

Suddenly an Italian Army helicopter roared in directly overhead. At the same time Farel's voice crackled loudly over the radio, identifying himself and telling the WNN Skycam helicopter to vacate Vatican airspace immediately.

'Dammit,' Adrianna said at the order. Then she heard the rotors overhead crank up and her Skycam pull away.

'Keep south of the wall,' she shouted into the phone. 'When that engine comes out, stay with it!'

For some reason the work engine had stopped just inside the gates and Roscani crossed the tracks behind it quickly, moving to his right and past the station. Coughing, his eyes tearing with the smoke, he pulled open his jacket and slid his 9mm Beretta automatic from his belt. Straining to see, he went up the road in the direction of the tower. What he was doing was totally illegal, but he didn't care. The law was fucked and could go to hell. He'd made the decision in an instant as he walked down the tracks after the work engine and saw the huge gates pull back for it. The open portal in the wall was all he needed, and he went for it just like that, all fire and emotion and the knowledge that he had to do something.

And now, as he fought the smoke and tears and just tried to breathe, he prayed to God he wouldn't lose his bearings and get lost, that he would somehow find the Addisons before Farel's gunmen or Thomas Kind did.

Thomas Kind ran forward, Walther mascinen pistole in hand, wiping his eyes, trying not to cough with the acrid smoke. It was already hard enough to see anything, and the physical act of coughing jarred and threw him off even more.

Running across the lawn, jumping a low hedge, he suddenly lost his bearings and stopped. It was like being on skis in a whiteout. Up, down, or sideways, everything was the same.

He could hear emergency sirens far to his left. Above, and also to the left, was the heavy thud of rotors from what he assumed was the Italian Army jet helicopter circling to land on the roof of the papal palace. Pulling up his radio, he spoke into it in Italian.